Advertisement
9/11, 20 years later
China

9/11, 20 years later: Joe Biden visits sites of attacks as US remembers victims of terrorism

  • ‘No matter how much time has passed, these commemorations bring everything painfully back’, US president says in video message
  • Vice-President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, were with the president as he laid a wreath at the Pentagon 9/11 memorial

5-MIN READ5-MIN
49
Joe Biden and Jill Biden followed by Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff attend a wreath-laying ceremony at the Pentagon, Virginia on Saturday. Photo: AFP
Jacob Fromerin Washington
At a sombre ceremony in lower Manhattan on Saturday, US President Joe Biden marked the 20th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, standing silently among a crowd of mourners while the nearly 3,000 victims’ names were read aloud by family members.

“No matter how much time has passed, these commemorations bring everything painfully back as if you just got the news a few seconds ago,” Biden said in a video released by the White House as part of the memorial activities.

The ceremony, attended by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, as well as other current and former senior officials, was held under a sunny blue sky at the 9/11 memorial site in New York City, where the 110-storey twin towers of the World Trade Centre once stood. In their place now are two square reflecting pools where water flows down into voids in the ground.

YouTube video player

The attacks of that day killed 2,977 people, injured thousands more, and launched the US into a two-decade war in Afghanistan that only ended late last month.

Bruce Springsteen and Broadway actor Kelli O’Hara sang at the commemoration, but by tradition, no politicians spoke there.

Select Voice
Select Speed
1x
AI-generated voice